Provide alpaka packages

[bernhardmgruber]

AFAIK there are no packages of alpaka available yet on popular package managers. Having such a package would ease installation of alpaka for downstream users.

I think we should at least have a spack package. I would also welcome a package on vcpkg. There is already an issue for a Conda package: #962 At CERN, alpaka is already available on the LCG (LHC Computing Grid): https://lcginfo.cern.ch/pkg/alpaka/

If we agree on providing packages we must also maintain them, so it is a commitment we need to make on our side. I think the professional support would be ideal to take over such a responsibility.

We should also document the necessary steps after each alpaka release for each package manager we support, so the professional support has an easy time of updating the downstream packages.

[bernhardmgruber]

I have a bit of experience with vcpkg, so I could give it a go. However, I don't want to commit as a long-term maintainer. Updating alpaka on vcpkg should be easy though, since it would just require changing the github tag, running some commands and opening a PR to the vcpkg repository.

[SimeonEhrig]

related issue: https://github.com/alpaka-group/alpaka/issues/1081

[bernhardmgruber]

Ok, it seems there is already an outdated alpaka package on spack: https://packages.spack.io/package.html?name=alpaka. Found via: https://repology.org/projects/?search=alpaka

[bernhardmgruber]

I drafted the vcpkg port here: https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/pull/26812

[bernhardmgruber]

@amadio considered adding a package for gentoo.

[bernhardmgruber]

I drafted the vcpkg port here: microsoft/vcpkg#26812

And it was merged. alpaka is now available on vcpkg.

[bernhardmgruber]

We discusses this in the alpaka VC today and we concluded that we don't have the resources for now to maintain packages.